Digital cameras and mobile phones with cameras are widely used as image capture apparatuses. Such image capture apparatuses capture an image of a subject with an image sensor such as a CCD, and convert image signals from the CCD into digital image data, and record the digital image data in an internal memory, a memory card, or the like. Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publications No. 2001-024928 and No. 2003-199020 disclose image capture apparatuses which perform image processing under several processing conditions to image signals obtained by one image capture operation to convert the image signals into plural image data of different sizes and image qualities, and record such image data in a memory.
Resizing function to change a size of the image data is known. Since the resizing function is intended for the data of captured image, the image can be resized only to a smaller size but not to a larger size than the original image data. Accordingly, if the image is mistakenly captured in a relatively small size such as VGA (640×480 dots), it is necessary to recapture the image with a correct image data size or to use the small-sized image without recapturing. Further, in the case, for instance, the user is intentionally capturing the image with a small image size and unexpectedly captures a best scene, it is also impossible to increase the image data size after the image is captured.
In the above prior art, the image is captured with the maximum size, and various image data with different sizes and image qualities are generated therefrom and recorded. Therefore, the above inconvenience has been solved. However, due to the large image size, the image processing takes a long time, and high consumption power is necessary. Moreover, due to the enormous amount of image data, the memory runs out in a short time.